A school principal’s mission to beat the odds

The Bridge to Brilliance. How One Principal in a Tough Community Is Inspiring the World. By Nadia Lopez with Rebecca Paley. 266 pages. Viking. $26.

‘‘I was part of an educational system that, despite its best intentions, only reinforced their failures.’’

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Nadia Lopez is an unlikely star of the internet age — an urban-middle-school principal whose story went viral. It all began in January 2015 when the blog Humans of New York featured an eighth grader at her school named Vidal.
‘‘Who’s influenced you...